Maurois, André

Maurois, André äNdrā´ mōrwä´ [key], 1885–1967, French biographer, novelist, and essayist. His name was originally Émile Herzog. His first work, The Silence of Colonel Bramble (1918, tr. 1920), describing British military life, was highly successful. Ariel (1923, tr. 1924), a life of Shelley, was followed by lives of Byron, Disraeli, Chateaubriand, Washington, George Sand, Victor Hugo, and others. Other works include A History of England (1937, tr. rev. ed. 1958), Tragedy in France (1940, tr. 1940), From My Journal (1946, tr. 1948), and Proust (1949, tr. 1950). Maurois wrote discerningly on the art of biography as well as on writing and on living.